Being Alec Ramsay
by Simon920
Summary: Alec is interviewed for a magazine article.


T

Disclaimers: These guys aren't mine, they don't belong to me, worst luck, so don't bother me.

Archive: Fine, but if you want it, please ask first.

Feedback: Hell, yes.

**Please Note:** This article was first published in Sports Illustrated and is reprinted here with their permission.

(Okay, I made that up, but let's pretend, shall we?)

**Being Alec Ramsay**

Yes, we all know who Alec Ramsay is. We've all heard and heard and heard again that he was the only human survivor of that shipwreck and his stint as a castaway on a desert island with this incredible black stallion no one else could get anywhere near. We all know he brought the horse home to New York, somehow tamed him enough, raced him against the best of the day and won against all the odds. He was fourteen then.

We all know about how, over the last few years, he's parlayed one incredible piece of bad luck into what's arguably the highest profile racing career in history. So far he has two undefeated, record breaking champions in the Black and his son, Satan, two Kentucky Derby wins in two tries, a Triple Crown. Okay, he did miss being the youngest jockey ever to win by three months, but that Steve Cauthen kid was a real comer in his day, too, if you'll remember. Did I mention he also drove the winning horse to add the Hambletonian as another feather in his cap? I believe that makes him the only flat rider to manage that one. Oh, and lately he's started dabbling in steeple chasing in his spare time, too.

Busy young man, this one. No wonder his nickname is Boy Wonder—which he hates, by the way, so don't use it in his earshot.

You may even have heard that the farm he helped found and where he's officially on the payroll as stable rider—Hopeful Farm—is one of the most successful small operations in the business and growing in an industry where foreclosures are becoming the norm.

The list of his accomplishments is a long one and he's still twenty-one years old. If he doesn't end up in the Hall of Fame there's no justice in the world—oh, I don't mean this week or anything, some time in the next couple of decades would be fine. I suspect Alec will still be around to make it to the awards dinner.

So when my editor told me that he wanted a profile of Alec and would I please try to find something new to say about him instead of the usual recitation of accolades, I was at something of a loss. I guess the boss felt my pain or something because he handed me an issue of SI from last January, pointing out a blurb about one inch long on the Transitions page—it was a wedding announcement for Alec Ramsay and a young lady named Pam Athena. "Go for the human interest angle".

I've talked with Alec enough to know he'd hate this because he likes to keep what little he has left of his private life private. I swear, Alec—he made me do. He threatened my livelihood and I've got a wife and kids. Honest.

Picking up the phone, I made a call up to his farm; his mother answered. She happens to be a nice lady and said that, as far as she knew, Alec was just hanging around the place the next day riding some horses like he does every day he isn't at a racetrack. If I wanted to drive up and talk to him she was sure it would be all right.

I got there at nine in the morning, which is about three or four hours after Alec usually rolls out of bed and, sure enough, he was on the back of a horse when I pulled in. He and a young lady I took to be an exercise rider were just finishing working the two year olds they have in training but he stopped what he was doing and offered to show me around the farm while we talked.

Now I happen to love horse farms. I have to get this out of the way right off the bat. I love looking at the fields with the mares and their foals lazing and playing on a beautiful day with the sun shining on well-groomed coats. I love the smells. I love the fences. I love seeing the stallions in their own fields arrogantly watching their herds. I even love the barn cats walking around hunting mice in the feed rooms. I especially love the people who devote their lives to these animals because they love their beauty and don't just see them as product to be exploited for their earning power but as noble animals deserving of good treatment and respect.

Alec's feelings for his horses came through with every sentence he said and every comment he made while I was up there. He loves what he does. He loves his farm and his job and he loves the Black. Oh, sure, I'd heard all the stories about how they have this special bond, an understanding between them that no one can get between and I'd chalked it down to hype and exaggeration. I'm a cynical reporter so I figured that was probably all it was, right? Wrong. I've seen him ride the Black and it's true that they make as good a unit of man and horse as I've ever seen. Then I watched Alec go into Black's stall and lead him out to the field they have reserved just for his use and saw the way they communicate with one another. Sound stupid? It isn't. Anyone who has an animal that's special in their life—even a dog or a cat—will understand what I mean. These two are on the same page and they get each other completely. Alec doesn't demand, he asks and Black gives, knowing Alec won't ask anything he can't provide. I guess it's trust combined with as pure a love as you'll find and it's wonderful to see. It really is.

And yes, the Black in person is incredible—he's a big horse, standing almost eighteen hands but he's still light and lithe. He's muscular without being muscle bound or weighed down. And he's intelligent, all you have to do it look at his eyes to know he's sizing you up and thinking about what he sees. When Alec turned him lose in the field he looked at Alec for a second and waited for a signal. Alec looked right back at him and said, as conversationally as you'd talk to your neighbor, "Go ahead." That was all it took and Black cantered to some predetermined spot, lowered himself to the grass and spent a good five minutes rolling while we watched.

I'm still not sure who enjoyed that the most—me, the Black or Alec and judging by the look on his face, I think I'd have to go with Ramsay.

After getting a tour of the place—which is as well run, clean and organized as you'd expect, we sat down in his office and talked. I've met Alec a few times before and he's always been polite, articulate and straightforward, if careful about what he says for publication. You also have to understand that there aren't too many questions he hasn't been asked over the years and so it's always hard to get original answers, phrases that aren't stock, from someone as used to being interviewed as Ramsay is.

This time I started out by asking him how he coped with everything. I mean the kid has a lot on his plate.

"Day by day."

C'mon, Alec—don't try to con a con man. Yes, he's respected and well liked and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the racing industry who has anything negative to say about him, but I also know Alec has a reputation for being, well, intense. He's been known to focus on potential problems and ignore the positive, see trouble where it doesn't exist, or doesn't exist yet, anyway. He was diagnosed with an ulcer when he was about sixteen and it was blamed on him internalizing problems, keeping things to himself a bit too much. I suspect he keeps the Tums factory going all by himself when he's in that kind of mood and I've heard stories of him walking through the back sides of race tracks at three in the morning because he's too keyed up to sleep.

I'd meant how he coped in a larger sense; we're talking about a very young man who's at the pinnacle of his profession. He survived the already mentioned ship wreck, a couple of plane crashes, riding accidents which include a fractured skull, various broken bones and enough stress to sink a Zen devotee. I've seen him working down at Belmont and Churchill Downs and he can't go ten feet with out someone saying hello or asking for his autograph or a statement about some upcoming race or if he wants to go have dinner or meet their sister.

"Day by day. I just take it as it comes." I asked him to elaborate when he was interrupted by the exercise girl in the doorway, asking him something about the split times of one of their two-year-olds. Instead of just answering he invited her in and introduced us, adding "My wife."

Pam impressed me as a sweet, tiny and sunny young woman who is as clearly besotted by her new husband as he is with her. These are a couple of genuinely nice people who have ended up together and I get the distinct impression that if I'm assigned to do another story about Alec in forty years, Pam will still be here working the horses right along side him. These two nice kids have found one another and I'd put my money on them making it for the long haul.

She shook my hand, said his mother wanted to know if I'd be staying for lunch and went to tell her mother in law that, yes, she had an extra mouth to feed.

She's a very pretty young woman, the new Mrs. Ramsay and then Alec reminded me that she had ridden the Black in a race down at Belmont last fall, the only person other than him to ever race the horse. She won, of course and now it looks like Hopeful Farm has another race rider if they need one. Alec has a photo hanging on the wall of his office. The photo of Pam is the usual one from the winner's circle with her wearing Hopeful Farm silks, smiling and sitting on the Black immediately after that race. There aren't any pictures of Alec's Triple Crown victories or any of the other major wins he's had. Go on, guess which race he's proudest of?

So I was thinking that Hopeful Farm might just extend their breeding program to include top of the line race riders in addition to the top of the line horses they already have a well-earned reputation for. I asked Alec about that, about them wanting to have kids and he politely fobbed me off. I knew he didn't want to answer really personal questions—but he made a general comment about how of course they wanted to have them, but they were still young themselves, still newlyweds and weren't in a hurry. He's right, of course. Like I said, he's all of twenty-one and she's still twenty. I think it hurt to see how happy these two are together—it's sweet, touching and heartwarming; all those things us hard bitten reporters are supposed to mock and disdain but I simply found myself jealous.

The future they have in front of them—okay, I don't know what it is any more than they do, but it sure looks like it could be a pretty good one from where I'm standing.

That's another thing I was surprised about. Usually when you go into the office of someone as successful as Alec you see a bunch of trophies and pictures, framed letters of congratulations from famous people and stuff like that covering the walls. The only other photo was sitting in a frame on the desk and was of Pam smiling on a beach. I asked, Alec shrugged. Yes, he really is modest about his accomplishments. That's not put on or fake. Oh, he knows what he's done, he's a long way from being naïve or stupid, but he simply doesn't flaunt it.

He has class. I mean he has it the way a lot of us wish we did, but in his case it's part of his DNA, something he was born with because everyone I've asked tells me that he hasn't changed much since he first started. Oh, he's gotten better at his job, more confident as he's become more experienced and learned more, but his basic personality? That's been consistent for years and is one of the main reasons he's so well liked. I tried to say something to Alec about that but he changed the subject, refusing to go there.

Then he addressed the question I'd asked a few minutes before. "The farm is my pressure valve. That's how I deal with everything. I get in my car down at Belmont or Aqueduct or someplace and drive and all the pressure from the track leaves by the time I get here. And Pam. I relax around her."

I know that's about what you'd expect from a newlywed, but I believe him. The boy, excuse me, the young man has it bad and that's a good thing.

"How are you and Henry (Daily) getting along? Everything all right on that score?" Henry, God love him, is one of the best trainers working but he's notoriously hard to get along with if he's in one of his moods, which he often is. The reports of the shouting matches between him and his riders have been legendary for decades.

"Henry and I understand each other; we get along fine, always have."

Sure, Alec. If you say so.

"Any plans of him retiring?"

"None that I know of, no." But my guess is that's Alec's next job title. When the day comes for Henry to hang it up, I suspect that Ramsay will step up to the plate as trainer. He's already largely in charge if the youngsters at Hopeful Farm and if that isn't a solid grounding, I don't know what is. It may not happen for a few years, but when it does happen, remember that you read it here first.

By the way, did you know that he's about the only working jock who actually has a college degree? I asked him about that and he gave me about the last explanation in the world I'd expect.

Making a long story short, Alec was a sophomore up at Syracuse University, doubling in business and animal husbandry. Well, Black was gone for good as far as anyone knew and Alec doubted that he'd really ever see Black's first born foal. He'd been promised that as a thank you gift for saving the sire so instead he hit the books, intending to just get on with his life without racing.

Then weanling Satan arrived.

The parent Ramsay's didn't take their son's desire to quit school and ride horses too well and so resorted to some parental blackmail. Alec was told if he didn't stay in school then untried, untrained Satan would be sold to the highest bidder. Period. Alec transferred to NYU—a subway commute from where his family was living at the time, and got his degree a month after he won the Belmont Stakes. Oh, and he had to keep up at least a 3.5 or risk losing his scholarship. And that's another thing—try to get a grip on what studying for finals would be like when your prepping for the final race in the Triple Crown as the odds on favorite. He laughed when he told me that his parents were happier about him getting his bachelor's than making the cover of Time the same week.

We walked over to the main house to get lunch and it was almost, though not quite, like a scene straight out of the Walton's. Well, the Walton's with a sharp edge of reality. These are smart people who work very hard to make a success of what they do and so they often have to talk some serious turkey and make hard decisions. The conversation, or part of it, during our lunch was regarding whether or not it made sense for them to keep four horses eligible for the next Kentucky Derby since it costs money to keep them on the list. Alec's father, who was an accountant in his past life and does all the books didn't second-guess anyone, but pointed out how much it would run.

By the way, it costs $50,600 to enter a horse in the Derby from first nomination to the starting post this year. The breakdown is $600 to nominate a horse—that's just to get his name on the long list. That's not a fortune, no but if you decide that your horse should get a real shot at the race, well…Then it's $25,000 to actually enter the race and another $25,000 to start. For the Preakness and the Belmont, add another $20,000 for each horse, for each race. That's $90,600 to enter a horse in all three races—assuming you nominate them early because the prices go up if you delay—they go up fast and high. The good people at Hopeful Farm know this and circled their calendar to save themselves a lot of thousands of dollars. Of course, the flip side of this is that the guaranteed winner's purse for the Derby this year is two million dollars and at least six hundred thousand for each of the other two Crown races. That's if you win. Hopeful Farm has won the Derby twice.

In addition to this, each owner entering a horse will get a big gift pack with jackets, hats, shirts, pins, and probably a bunch of other stuff related to the local area. At the Derby they also get free use of a car with a big Derby sign on the side, not sure if the other tracks do that one too. They will also get invited to tons of parties and other schmooze fests plus get the really good third floor clubhouse seats for the Derby. For many I guess these perks plus being able to say you had a horse run in the Kentucky Derby are enough to spend the $50,600+ it takes to get there. (From Cindy Pierson Dulay at For Alec and his associates, it's just the by-product of what they do for a living at the top floor level they work in.

Alec, reasonably, told his father it was too soon to know which horses, if any, would prove to be worth starting and so they'd have to keep paying. William just nodded and spread some more mayo on his hard roll. He leaves the horse side of things to his son and Henry Daily.

The conversation settled down to my asking more questions for this article, though I noticed that Alec skipped the bread and chips, had unsweetened iced tea and confined himself to some cold chicken that looked like it was probably left over from another meal. Yes, even Alec has to watch his weight. I asked and he told me that he doesn't feel healthy if he has to get below about 105 or 110 pounds, his normal weight, but he can't afford to get more than a pound or two over that, either. It's a constant balancing act and a very large bane in the life of any jockey.

Next I asked if Alec ever had any of the other weight related problems common in his field—anorexia, bulimia, pills and the like. He said he was basically one of the lucky ones about his weight but even he'd gone through a phase of simply not eating enough if he had a light horse coming up. Then he told me some of the standard tricks he'd use to drop a quick ten pounds, dismissing it as just part of his job. They call that anorexia, Alec. He added that was resolved when he starved himself down to 100 pounds, passed out after a race, needed an emergency IV and faced what amounted to an intervention by his friends. He and Henry Daily now have an agreement that if they have need a rider that light, they hire someone beside him to ride the race.

I saw some looks exchanged across the kitchen and strongly suspect that his wife and parents had something to do with that decision. I also know, as a parent myself, that if one of my own kids told me about the 'standard' methods jocks use to keep their weigh where it has to be, I'd be tempted to insist on a career change.

I spoke to his parents when Alec left the room for a minute and yes, they worry about him. They worry about him having to make weight and they worry—a lot—about him getting hurt. Every jockey gets hurt. It's part and parcel of the job. Alec's mother told me she stopped going to races the day she witnessed a bad spill that killed one rider and three horses. No, her son wasn't involved because he was out in front winning the race, but she saw what could happen and has declined to go since. Her family doesn't make an issue of it.

After lunch I had to get back to the city, promising Alec I'd see him down at Belmont the next week to watch him ride a couple of races and have the paper get a few new pictures to go along with what you're reading. He wished me a safe drive back and then headed off to check on a pregnant mare close to her date. Maybe this one would be another stakes winner, you just never know.

Sure enough I was standing by the rail the next Wednesday just after dawn to watch Alec start his day with some training gallop's when he rode over to say hello. We chatted and I commented on the nice looking watch he was wearing. It was gold from the look of it with all the stop watch features he needs working race horses, although like all really good race riders, he's capable of keeping time in his head, right down to the second. It didn't seem like the kind of extravagant thing he'd get for himself; Alec is a jeans and tee shirt down to earth kind of guy as far as I've always seen. He dismissed the questions, saying the thing had been a gift and rode off, ending the conversation.

Billy Watts, another top rider and one of Alec's closest friends was standing next to me and, after Alec was out of earshot, told me the real story. Yes, the watch was indeed a gift. During a race about three years ago out at Santa Anita, Billy's cinch broke going into the last turn. Alec, riding the Black, was just cruising by on the inside on his way to take the lead when he pulled even with Watt's horse. Alec saw what happened, steered the Black as close beside Billy's horse as he could get, put an arm around Billy's waist and held onto to him, preventing him falling directly into the path of the entire rest of the field. Bill told me Mike Costello pulled up on the outside, running interference to make sure no one bumped them from the off side—all while going forty miles an hour and the Black going nuts at being held back when all he wanted was to be in the lead. Oh, and the broken cinch was dangling below Bill's horse, threatening to trip him up any second.

Alec and Billy somehow managed to pull up together like a harnessed team of carriage horses, preventing what could very likely have been a fatal accident—a horse and rider going down with an entire field behind them? It's about as bad a racing accident as you'll find. And, mind you, Alec was in just as much danger; unbalanced on his own horse, supporting another rider's weight while guiding Black—not what anyone would call a gentle farm pony— with one hand.

_That's_ advanced riding.

And that's the only race he's ever entered that Black hasn't won.

The other jocks in the race, as well as a number of the guys back in the jockey room who watched it all on the monitor, took up a quick collection and called an emergency purchase/engraving order into Tiffany's. Someone picked up the watch a couple of hours later and the jocks gave it to Alec at a dinner they basically forced him to attend later that night. I understand Alec changed the solid gold strap for a less obvious leather one, because that's Alec.

Interesting combination inside this kid; he's as competitive as they come—you have to be to make the big time in racing as fast and as solidly as Ramsay has. At the same time his priorities aren't so much winning the races—which he does his damnedest to do—but to simply do his job and live his life was well as he can. Now don't misunderstand me. I know Alec works his tail off to be good at his job and he spends as many hours a day as it takes to get it all done. This isn't a hobby for him and I'm not implying that he's ready to fall back on plan B if this horse thing doesn't work out for him. He'll do anything he can to keep his farm and his horses running the way he and his partners want them to.

But…

I strongly suspect that Alec will put even more into making his marriage work than he does at working with his horses. And that's because he's a smart guy with both feet on the ground who has his priorities straight—even when his feet are in stirrups a good part of the time.

He's simply a good guy doing his best in a profession he clearly loves and has a very real talent for. Now, this doesn't make him a boy scout or an alter boy or any of that and I know he has a temper because I've seen it and heard a few stories about that side of him as well. Mostly they seem to involve something like one of his animals being abused or someone not doing their job or some other screw up that shouldn't happen. But that's just because it all matters to him. It matters that things happen the way they're supposed to.

And, in his quiet, day to day way, he's making it happen.

6/4/07

10


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